


Shine and Shadow

by Musyc



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Dark Magic, Gen, Severus Snape - character, Spells & Enchantments, commentfic, giftfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 12:03:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musyc/pseuds/Musyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What people forgot was that it was rarely the magic itself that was Dark. There was always a balance in life, a shine and a shadow, and it was the purpose to which a spell was cast that turned it from one to the other.  Hate and love, fear and worship, death and life. The coins of magic all had two sides, and it was the wizard that chose a face. Severus understood this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shine and Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2009 as a gift for bambu345.

It was one of the most ancient magics known to man, wizard and Muggle alike. Take a piece of a person's body - a drop of saliva, a strand of hair, a clipping of nail - and you could control them. A potion stirred under a black moon, a cantrip whispered into a corpse's ear, and with the smallest, most innocuous thing, you had your magic wrapped around theirs. You had them contained, you had them controlled. It was one of the ancient magics, a Dark magic.

What people forgot was that it was rarely the magic itself that was Dark. There was always a balance in life, a shine and a shadow, and it was the purpose to which a spell was cast that turned it from one to the other. Hate and love, fear and worship, death and life. The coins of magic all had two sides, and it was the wizard that chose a face. Severus understood this.

He took from Lily's son first, automatically, sneering at himself for the concern and unable to stop in spite of it. Took the wadded up and cast aside tissue from the bin and tucked it into a hidden pocket. He would not do this for the boy who lived now, but for the boy who had loved then. Snot and mucus burned in an iron cauldron with a sprig of holly and a pinch of black pepper.

He took from the boy's companion, for the days ahead would test that loyalty. Took a chewed-off and chewed-up thumbnail spat into the sink, scraped it from the porcelain and folded it into a parchment. He pounded it to powder in a mortar made from a giant's kneecap, and sewed the powder into a brown cloth no larger than the nail the powder had once been.

He took from the girl, their knowledge and rock. Stole into her room under the cover of a veiled moon and slipped three hairs from her brush. She rolled and murmured and the clouds slipped from the moon, and in the silver light he saw her. _Saw_ her in her youth and promise and beauty, and once his heart had regained its beat, he prised every last hair from the bristles of her brush. Every tight curl and split end, every strand and frizz. Three were knotted around stalks of mullein - three hairs, three knots, three stalks. The remainder he stared at as the tallow candle guttered. Long hairs, curled and twisted like the ancient mysteries. He reached for them as if his hands were under another's control, and, holding his breath, he braided.

Ashes, powder, and three knotted hairs. He buried them beneath a hawthorn tree, in a pouch lined with salt distilled from a unicorn's tears. He layered the spot with spell after spell of distraction, illusion, disguise, and became the Keeper of his own Secret. Around his wrist, under his sleeve, a thin braided cord kept another Secret for him.

Two sides to every coin, two paths for every spell. Worship and hate, fear and life, death and love. Shine and shadow.


End file.
